Apple plans ambitious new ‘spaceship’ campus

08.06.2011
Laura O'Brien
http://www.siliconrepublic.com/business/item/22100-best-office-building-in/

Apple CEO Steve Jobs has submitted plans to build a new 150-acre campus in Cupertino, California, saying it could create “the best office building in the world.”

Jobs presented the concept of the new campus yesterday at Cupertino City Hall.

Jobs said Apple's current headquarters, 1 Infinite Loop, only holds 2,800 people and as the company hires 12,000 employees, Apple has been forced to rent buildings in its radius. As a result, the company needs another building to augment this but still wishes to remain in Cupertino.

The planned 150-acre campus will be located on the original home of HP’s computer systems division.

Apple bosses have hired who they believe are the “best architects in the world” to create the campus and have used the experience they’ve gained when designing their retail outlets worldwide.

The four-storey headquarters will be a circular loop with a courtyard in the middle, with curved glass all the way around it.

”It’s a little like a spaceship landed,” said Jobs.

Apple will make the campus 80pc landscape and will enlist the help of a senior arborist from Stanford to plant more indigenous trees, including apricot trees.

Parking will be placed underneath the main building and within another structure to reduce the current surface parking by 90pc.

The primary energy source will come from Apple's own energy building, which uses natural gas and other clean sources. The company will use the city’s grid as its backup source.

Jobs said Apple will submit plans as soon as possible and will break ground next year. The building should be finished by 2015.

While planning permission hasn’t been granted yet, the council seemed enamoured by the Apple CEO and his plans. One said that calling the building spectacular “was an understatement.”

Another asked if Apple could supply a free iPad and Wi-Fi for residents, however, Jobs said he thinks Apple brings “a lot more than free Wi-Fi.”

Jobs said if he is unable to build this headquarters, the company would have to move elsewhere. This would be quite a blow for Cupertino, as Apple is its largest taxpayer.